Extra reason for Tom Fleming to be thankful

Tom Fleming, 1982 North Marion grad who started at Monongah High before it consolidated into NMHS, had an extra reason to be thankful on Thanksgiving.

Oh, it was the usual gathering of family in Bridgeport. But Tom also has his 2014 hospital stay in the rearview mirror.

Helping the family celebrate with Tom and wife Ruby – another North Marion grad who began high school at Monongah before the consolidation -- were Jessicah Fleming, daughter of Lisa Lee Moore, a North Marion grad who lives in Fairmont and is a RN caregiver, and Carol Fleming’s granddaughter.

Jessicah is a TCB Pipeline adminstrator who lives in Fairmont. She describes herself as “a kick-ass stepmom.”

Monongah history is littered with Flemings, most of whom looked down on the rest of us. Because they lived on Fleming hill which overlooked the Booths Creek railroad bridge, West Fork River, East Monongah and West Monongah.

There’s Bill Fleming -- William Fleming III, Class of 1960 – quarterback of the unbeaten Monongah High football teams in 1958 and 1959 who lives in Lynchburg, Virginia.

 

His wife is Patty Sellers, a Fairmont West grad from Martinsburg. They’ve been married more than a half-century.

 

Patty dated Joe Martin, Class of 1959, who lives on Treasure Island, Florida, near St. Petersburg with Arlene Kitchin Martin, a Nova Scotia, Canada native. That was ages go, when both were in college.

Bill’s mother was Meryle Houchin Fleming. Bill’s grandfather and Barbara Fleming Marsh’s father were brothers. Barbara, Class of 1947, lives in Thousand Oaks, California.

Since Adrian Currey married into the Fleming family, and grew up in Monongah with 2 sisters and 3 brothers, that provided a lot of branches for cousins in the Fleming and Currey families. That’s why Jim McDaniel, Class of 1960, who lives in Behoboth Beach, Delaware, thinks he’s a cousin of Bill Fleming. They both are Class of 1960.

Hardly anyone grew up in Monongah without a lot of cousins because the families often were large and married into other large families. My uncle, Renzy Fazio, for example, was one of 13 children and they married into a slew of other families in Monongah.

Bill Fleming came to Lynchburg to begin a private Physical Therapy practice in 1966. It grew into 10 offices in central Virginia [Rehabilitation Associates of Central Virginia] and his youngest daughter runs the Bedford office. He’s been retired for nearly a decade. His daughters are Whitney, Kelly and Harrison.